Top 5 Mindfulness tips to take action NOW during this pandemic to help your mindset and GROW your business! With Malorie Nicole #481

Ep. 48134 min2020-04-20Guest: Malorie Nicole

Entrepreneurs can protect their businesses during the pandemic by first addressing their own fear-driven mindset, then checking in with clients, finding new markets, and connecting authentically rather than freezing or over-reacting.

Cover art for Top 5 Mindfulness tips to take action NOW during this pandemic to help your mindset and GROW your business! With Malorie Nicole #481
Key takeaways
it's never been easier to have a conversation than it is right now

About this episode

Interview with Malorie Nicole, Having 1st aired in 2009, with over 3.6 million downloads in 100+ counties, “SEO Podcast, The Best SEO Podcast has become one of the longest-running and most authoritative podcasts for staying ahead of the perpetually changing digital marketing landscape.Great for internal marketers, business owners, and agencies from novice to experienced in using the internet to market and grow a…

Questions this episode answers

What are the top 5 mindset and business tips for entrepreneurs during the pandemic?

Malorie Nicole lists: first, examine the story you are telling yourself and get out of panic mode; second, check in directly with current clients; third, look for new markets your existing skills can serve; fourth, use the moment to connect genuinely with people since everyone shares similar fears; fifth, seek mindset coaching support.

Why do soft skills matter more than hard skills during a business crisis?

Malorie Nicole argues that most business owners already have the tactical knowledge they need, but unresolved emotional patterns create paralysis and poor decision-making. Until fear and scarcity thinking are addressed, hard skills cannot be applied effectively, which is what causes businesses to fail in downturns.

How does Malorie Nicole help entrepreneurs who feel stuck in a business they no longer want?

She takes clients through an eight week process that uncovers why they think the way they think, traces blocks back to past experiences, and reworks subconscious patterns around scarcity and fear. One client left a seven figure agency he was miserable in and built a new business where he is happy and replaced his income.

Should businesses keep selling during the pandemic or pause all marketing?

Matt Bertram and Malorie Nicole both say business should not just stop. The key is being aware of how you are selling and connecting authentically. Facebook ad costs are down while usage is up, making it a good time to build presence online and reach people with a message that fits the current moment.

In their words

it's not the lack of hard skills. It's people not knowing how to work through the low times because the reality of this is in my opinion, and I'm only 30 years old, this is going to happen 10 more times before I die in my business.

Malorie Nicole

I guarantee you every single person that's listening to this has been through something harder in their life, but they're here listening to this podcast and that's telling that you're going to get through this.

Malorie Nicole
Terms defined in this episode
Subconscious blocks
Neural pathways that create default stress and overwhelm patterns, identified by Malorie Nicole as the root cause of poor decision-making and paralysis in business owners.
Neuroplasticity
The brain's ability to be retrained, referenced in the episode as the foundation for coaching work that helps entrepreneurs redesign how their brain processes information.
Soft skills
Emotional and interpersonal capabilities such as processing fear and building connections, described in the episode as what will break most businesses during a downturn rather than any lack of tactical knowledge.
Read the full transcript (6,559 words · 33 min read)

Hi, everyone. This is Matt Bertram with eWebResults. Just doing some interviews right now. Mallory here. I met at PodFest out in Orlando, the last marketing conference before the end of the year, right? Before everything got shut down. And so now we're all stuck in our homes. And, you know, meetings are going virtual. And so, you know, we wanted to catch up. And we thought we would do it while recording it so everybody else can see how our businesses are being affected and what we're going to be doing and how maybe you should think about it as well. So, Mallory, why don't you introduce yourself a little bit, talk about some of the things that you do actually, right? Not what you're doing now. We'll kind of get into that. And then a little bit about your podcast as well. I had a chance to listen to a few of the episodes. And right now, you know, you have to be centered with everything that's going on. And you have to be mindful. So really interested in hearing what you have to say. Cool. Yeah. Thanks for having me on. I'm excited to virtually talk to you. I think that's the new way of the world right now. So it's nice and convenient that we have this awesome podcast platform that already exists to be able to do more of it. So what I do in my business is I help entrepreneurs and executives overcome their mental barriers, primarily working with them on their subconscious blocks. So what that means is helping people kind of redesign the way their brain processes information, uncovering and unpacking neural pathways that have a tendency to create default stress and overwhelm patterns. And by reworking that, that gives them the ability to perform better at work, to have more clarity, to decrease their stress. And especially for businesses that are, you know, shifting from solopreneur to then leading a team, leading a team is not the same thing as just being a solo service provider. And that's something that a

lot of business owners go through. Like, how do I make this shift? I'm in charge of 10, 15 people now. These are different, a different type of skill set that I didn't need necessarily when I was just working more as a self-employed entrepreneur. No, absolutely. Like, um, so my partner, um, you know, uh, Chris Burris, uh, we, we've grown a couple of companies together, uh, but he used to make every employee when they started with this read, uh, E-Myth. Are you familiar with the book? No, I'm not. Okay. Uh, let me, I'll look it up here real quick, but, um, essentially, um, everyone coming in by Michael Gerber. Okay. I, I, I would recommend anybody that's kind of dealing with this sort of thing to put it on, uh, their reading list. What it talks about is the different stages of a business. And as the business owner, uh, once you go from being like, you know, maybe you're tech, a technical expert at something, or you're, you're doing a specific skill and then you have to add accounting. And you have to have it, you have to do all, like, you got to put all the hats on. You got to put janitor on, right? You got to put everything on. And, and as you grow, how, how, how to look at the business of like, when you hire a new person, you basically go, okay, you're going to take these five hats and here's all those job descriptions. And then as you grow, um, you keep taking the hats off till you build the structure of the company. So you start with the structure of the company and then build that out. So that, I think that that is kind of, that was one of the things that I keyed into to what you were saying. Also, I'm curious on like, you know, so I've, I've played those little games of like neuroplasticity and like, you know, to, to help kind of train your brain or kind of, it's like a muscle to

work it out. But you were talking about some things that, um, I've, I've kind of worked with some, uh, it's like celebrity therapists on of, of basically, uh, it's not counseling. Um, it's really like actual therapy, right? So you go back potentially to, uh, the first earliest thought that you have and kind of figure out what was going on there. Is that, is that some of the stuff you're doing? Are you kind of touching that? Or can you kind of go into a little bit more depth of maybe, um, what you're doing with some of these CEOs and business owners? Yeah. And I think the word therapy and coaching gets so intertwined these days that people get really confused by it. And the other part that makes it a little tricky is that there are a lot of high end therapists that are using coaching tactics. So it's like the, the lions are really gray. Um, in, in what that means, because in the therapy world, like it's not the same. Um, you're not really supposed to be quote unquote looking at moving forward steps and in coaching, that's the goal. You know, the goal for having someone rework, help you rework what's going on in your mind is to get you out of it so that you can lead your business and your team effectively. You know, you don't have all the time in the world just to sit around and talk about yourself and all these things that happen in your life. Like most of the people that I work with, they don't even have time to like schedule a meeting with me on the first, the first call because their lives are very hectic and very chaotic and very busy. That's why they need the help that they need because they need to figure out why the overwhelm exists in the first place because nobody started a business because they want to be overwhelmed all the time. Um, but yes, a lot of it is going back. It starts with, I take

everyone through an eight week process and it starts with really uncovering and unpacking. Why do you think the way that you think, where does that stem from? Where does that start? And uncovering that, reworking that will help shift into later performance driven tactics, you know, looking at what is, what's your unique gift in your business? Are you utilizing it? I can't tell you how many times I talked to business owners and they're doing the things that they hate. And it's like, well, how, why haven't you outsourced this yet? Why don't you have someone else on your team do this? And it's solely because their own control issues are blocking it and getting in the way. So uncovering all that crap so that you can lead effectively and have a team that also can lead effectively too. Really, really interesting. Can you give me a quick testimonial maybe of like a success story that's recently happened so people can understand like how this might relate to them? Yeah. So there's a couple different versions of people that I work with. Some of those people are more in transitional periods of like, Hey, I just built an agency. I built it up to seven figures, but I don't like it. I'm miserable. I don't even know how I got myself here. And I love the money, but I don't like what I'm doing anymore. And I feel stuck and I don't know how to get out of this. I ended up helping a lot of people in that market of, I feel really, really stuck. Cause that happens a lot in entrepreneurship. You buy all these products and all these things that tell you, this is how to scale. You do it. It works. You scale, you make money. And then you sit around looking at the walls going, this isn't what I wanted. So that's a really good example of somebody that I helped trying to figure out really what are the reasons that you created something that you don't want in the first place, doing

the deep work to rework that so that you can then start a different, maybe not a whole brand new business, but this person that I'm thinking of as an example of this, he has a different business now. He's making great money. He's replaced his income, but it's not the same business that he had before. And he's really happy. He's spending time with his family and all this stuff. Well, a lot of the reasons that he was stuck in that seven figure agency were not actually tactical. They were all mindset related that we're relaying to this feeling of I'm stuck and I can't get out. And that was creating paralyzation and action. Can you, can you, can you go a little bit deeper without giving away who it is or whatever of like, what, what, what broke, what changed, what, what transformation happened to, to, to, to have them be able to either let that go or sell it or whatever, and then move to something else? Yeah. Well, a lot of it was connected for this particular person. A lot of it was connected to scarcity in, in opportunity. And it's interesting that that's kind of what I just said, because that's, what's showing up right now too. A lot of people are experiencing their old patterns right now, their old trauma, their old stories, their old things that they have not worked through. And it's being heightened right now. And then you've got 15 hours of media intake, and then you're just left at the end of the day going, everything's falling apart. And I don't know how to take a step forward. So in this particular case with this person, I really helped him uncover some, some past experiences that happened in his life. And when I say that, I think everyone has a tendency to immediately go to, oh, well, this person must have been abused. This person must have had like a horrible childhood. That's really not always the case. Sometimes people grow up in households where they actually were not

taught emotional intelligence, tactical, kind of how to work through their own emotions. Their parents didn't know how to express emotions. So everything's bottled inside. And until you get through that first emotional processing step, you're going to get stuck. You're not going to think with clarity. You're not going to know how to then shift into the action because as any business owner knows, it's not all just emotional stuff. You have to take action. You have to take action. You have to move forward. But if your thoughts are kind of paralyzing you, your soft skills actually need to be addressed first so that you can then implement the hard skills that need to be done. So with this gentleman, we really looked and uncovered what those soft skills, what the blocks were on that processing. And a lot of it was centered back to scarcity and fear of the future. And if I shift and if I shift and if I pivot, is it going to work? Is this all just a lucky joke that I have a million dollar business and that it just happened to fall into my lap? Is that some kind of freak joke that just happened? Or can I really do this again? Man, yeah. I can think back to kind of my kind of journey so far was pretty crazy. And the thing that I learned more than anything else is I thought once I graduated college, the income earning and the growth within a company or building your own company is going to be linear, right? And, you know, I in my kind of mid-20s built a million dollar business and sold it and I was like on top of the world. And then I started another company like thinking I was Superman and I completely failed and lost a ton of money, you know? And then like got, got so like down that, you know, I was like, oh, maybe I should go like work at Starbucks. You know what I mean? Like, like, like, and I was like,

how did I go from, you know, like multi-million dollar yearly business to like, hey, I think I want to work at Starbucks. And then like getting through that and then like, you know, growing another company, but I was done with that old kind of industry, right? I was like, okay, I've been there. I'd hit that. Like, I don't have the energy to rebuild something, but I, but I could build something new. Like, you know, there's a lot of things that we deal with. And I think that we also develop coping mechanisms, right? And they do come from early childhood. If you, if you really think back to like your earliest moment when you had that fear or something like that, you can key in on what that is. And if you can address that, then you can open up a lot of different things. Um, so yeah, no, this, I think you're, you're, you're, uh, operating in a really interesting space. Tell me a little bit more how you kind of got into that. Yeah, for me, it actually all, it all started with some health problems that I was having, uh, back in 2014. And that kind of, it was this trickle effect of just like, I, I was experiencing four months of these symptoms of health issues. I have a food intolerance. And at the time, uh, that was a little harder to uncover than it is now. I know it's only been like six years, but the world's changed drastically in six years. So it took me a long time to figure out what was going on with my body. And in that time, I started learning more about health and wellness. I was working for an engineering firm and I really wanted to just uncover and understand like how my system was working and what was going on there. Um, and I decided to get a health coaching certification and that in a matter of a couple months led to, Oh, wait a minute. There's all this stuff about how the

brain processes information and, uh, the subconscious and the conscious and all these other things. And there's a vast world of certifications and coaching that I didn't know about. And I started a health coaching business and that quickly led to, uh, I can't even make this up people scheduling on my calendar as promoting myself as a health coach, but asking for like business support and mindset work because it was intertwined into the message in my marketing that I was sharing. Uh, and I just didn't fight it. I went with it. I rolled with it and quickly it became apparent to me like, okay, well, this whole health thing led you to this next step. Uh, but this is really what you're supposed to be doing. So that's kind of how it went. So, so, okay. So to, to kind of bring that up to like, what's going on today. Right. And, um, you know, right now, as this is being recorded, um, we just went into lockdown, uh, here in Houston. Okay. Like everything, non-essential business is getting shut. Down, you know, we were in kind of the social distancing for, you know, like 10 days or something like that. And there was a huge impact on business. Um, you know, one of the things I started to see is clients just, um, didn't know what to do. Like the sky is falling or I don't know what to do, but like cut all expenses. Right. Like, I don't know what's going on. So let me like hit the brakes on everything. Um, and you know, you know, we, we, we saw a couple of customers reduce services, which I think they were, they were being smart about kind of cashflow, but others like completely stopped. Right. And like, we're in, we're, you know, we're, we're in a campaign, like we're in a three month campaign. We're, you know, uh, coming to the close of it. Um, there's a bunch of things that we need to do to wrap up this campaign. And so we've been

working on this for a couple months. And just shut it down. Like, that's not, that's a knee jerk reaction to what's going on. Um, you know, I do a lot of stuff in digital marketing and, and like SEO and I'm, I'm telling like everything that's going on. Okay. Right now, what I will tell you is Google's not going to change their algorithm. Okay. Based upon what's happening. Right. And so, um, you know, we, we, as a business are looking at, okay, who's going to get hit the hardest, right? Restaurants, uh, anywhere that you have to go out and, and, and engage with somebody directly. Right. Um, now construction is the backbone of the economy. That's not slowing down. People are in, you know, big contracts there. Um, and, and there's backlog and all that, but we're, we're looking at businesses across the spectrum. Uh, and we're seeing, uh, what's changing. We're looking at the search data. We're seeing what's changing. And so what's interesting, I was even reading an article about Facebook advertising, Facebook advertising. Um, It's really cheap right now. Really cheap, but usage has gone way up. Right. And so, um, I, about a month ago, I think I was a little too early and you, you really, uh, got to get in the mindset of what, um, you know, your customer or your prospect, uh, prospective customer is looking at. And I was talking about, Hey, this is really a great time as ad spins going down to, to build your, uh, presence online, to, um, Build your personal brand depending on kind of where you're at and what journey you're on. Um, now's an opportunity because of the screen time going up to get in front of people and share your message, whether it's when this thing, you know, uh, recovers, which was people were talking about it being a U shape, like everything was going to bounce back. I think it's probably going to be more prolonged than that based on, you know, uh, what I'm seeing in, in kind

of the day they're saying, you know, Easter's when, um, they're going to try to open up parts of the country. But I, I think that that's probably too, um, uh, uh, positive, like a positive of outlook. Like I think that this, I think people need to understand how they're going to operate in this environment. And I think that, um, as people think that, like understand that they're going to think, well, how do I reach people? Like it's through, it's through digital, right? It's through social media. It's through all these different platforms. And can your business function in that environment? And so those are the, some of the things that, that we're providing consulting to existing clients and, and the things that I'm getting asked and, uh, looking at like, how do we make that shift? Like, or businesses that were completely traditional that aren't going to make it and they know it or, are, are going, Hey, we, we need a new website or, or what have you. Um, I'm curious kind of what you're seeing with your clients and where that mindset is right now. That's a fantastic question. Uh, clients right now are seemingly great. I've actually had a couple then I kid, you know, when I say this that are like, I'm really glad that I did all of my like crap work, like up until this point, because I know I would have reacted different to the situation. Had I not addressed a lot of the stuff that I've been working on over the last couple months, which is validating, you know, in some degree, it's like, yes, good. I'm glad that you see that because that goes to show. And I'm, I'm sharing that specifically to shed light to anybody that's listening to this. That goes to show how much our emotional response takes over our decision-making process. And I think, you know, I'm a people person more than anything. Like I'm a people person and that is the, those are the patterns that I'm seeing right now. People are

reacting out of fear and out of scarcity and out of what expectation of, of completely directed to fear they think is going to happen over the next 90 days. Well, unless they know how to work through their own fears that are coming up. And I don't mean, you know, getting your journal out and writing for 15 hours. I mean like really quick, effective understanding of how do I know what's fear and what's not so that I can make clear, effective decisions that are good and healthy for my business, for my employees, for my clients, for my family moving forward. And how do I also know when I'm making decisions that are maybe not the best, but I'm doing it as a reaction to the emotions that are coming up that I don't know how to handle and that I don't know how to shift through. And I think that more than anything is telling us right now, these soft skills, you know, especially in the entrepreneurial space, most people, and I'm very aware of this, it's not a good or bad thing. Most people want to talk about the hard skills. How do you do, how do you do the tactical stuff? How do you put your systems together? How do you market? How do you do this? Well, maybe it's time that the word soft skills like has a new name altogether, because that is what's going to break a lot of businesses right now. It's not the lack of hard skills. It's people not knowing how to work through the low times, because the reality of this is, in my opinion, and I'm only 30 years old, this is going to happen 10 more times before I die in my business. There's going to be downturns. There's going to be periods of time where unexpected things show up. How do I make it through that as a business owner? Do I have reserves put out? Do I have the ability to see opportunity in hard, stressful situations? Do I have the ability to

see a hundred days out, not a hundred hours out? We're stuck in a little bit of the fishbowl mechanism right now, and everyone's just seeing what happened yesterday and what happened tomorrow, and there's not a clear focus on what does this actually look like a year from now, and people are getting really lost in that. Yeah, I think that we're talking about soft skills. When you're saying that, you're talking about, and from listening to a few of your podcasts, you need to be really aware, and you need to be really mindful of looking at the bigger picture of what's going on and not being so narrow to what's happening. But I'm also seeing people, even on LinkedIn, these messages that people are sending are not being sensitive to what's happening. They haven't tweaked the message, and I think right now it's all about connection. I think it's always been about connection. I think it's always, always, always been about connection, but people are getting too caught up in the systems or what they're doing, and they manage churn or whatever. I mean, in today's world, more than anything else, we're so interconnected. Your different social media platforms, you used to be, oh, here's my personal life. Here's my business life. You're one person, offline, online. Your business, also, offline, online, or offline, online, whatever. Right, they're the same. Right, they're all the same. It's all interconnected, right? And it's all about connecting with customers and giving them whatever they need or want. Why are they searching for your service, right? And so we're talking to clients, and it's like, you've got to change your message. You've got to change in today's world with everything that's going on with the social distance to being at home. Why do people need what you're doing, right? Like, I was on the phone with a company of ours that's in Canada, and they're a cleaning company, okay? A cleaning company, okay? Like a commercial cleaning company. And clients are cutting down services, stopping services, everything. And they were in

kind of free fall, and they were concerned. And I was like, calm down. What do people need right now? Okay? Disinfectant. You know what I mean? There's always an answer. You've got to work through, like, exactly what you're saying. Calm down so that you can see clearly what opportunity is. I mean, there was a huge business opportunity, in my opinion, right? Like, and, and, and, like, how do you leverage that? Yeah, grocery stores, hospitals. I mean, they need extra people right now. Well, they need cleaning. No, they need, they need, like, commercial cleaning services. Like, I was like, you know, ER facilities or urgent care facilities, like, they need to step up their disinfectant, right? I mean, because you're going to, am I sick enough or is my kid sick enough to, should I actually risk going in there and them catching something else or COVID-19 versus just waiting it out at home, right? Like, so, like, there's, there's all, there's just all different kind of ways to look at it and ways to think about it and go, how, how do we operate in this environment? Like, like, if, if other people are, and that's the thing, too, is if you look at what other people are doing, there's a lot of different kind of opportunities, I think, to look at things. But I'm, I'm looking at this going, the world's changing. You have to maybe pivot your business. You have to think a little bit differently, plan for the worst, also, you know, hope for the best. And how do you find some healthy medium in there, right? And, like, I mean, can you share maybe with me some of the things of people that are well-grounded, that are centered, that you've coached, what are some of the really thoughtful changes that they're making in their business right now to sustain themselves, maybe? Mm-hmm. Well, the first thing that I really touched on with everyone other than the last week was, have you checked in with your clients? Because it's really, really easy,

and the answer actually was not yes to all of them. And that's why I'm bringing it up, because I know there's people listening to this that still haven't done what they have the ability to do to check in with their clients. It's really easy when chaos starts to stir up to just get in your zone and kind of take a step back and get in your seat and feel like you're going to ride the wave out. But people are feeling whatever it is that they're feeling. It doesn't really matter. You have the ability to show up for them in a time like this. So maybe that's an extra touch point. Like, have you called them this week? Like, I mean, I don't know how many clients, you know, you could have about 500 clients listening to this, but have you had your team call and check in with them? You know, everyone's getting the email, but have you actually spoken with your clients? I think that is, like, the number one thing everyone can do, because we have to look at what can I do? Well, the one thing you can do is talk to your people that are already paying you. Like, let's start there. Give me, like, if you could think of the top five things, right, like, in kind of two minutes or less, give me the top five things. Man, you did not prepare me for this. All right. No, it's got to be, it's got to be. What's on my forehead in my head? Yeah, like, you can't prepare for these things. You're, no one's prepared, right, for what's happening. And so tell me what you would think the top five things that people can do to take action now to help get in the right mindset, to help their business, you know, just kind of share some advice with everyone. The first one, before I'd even have people check in with their clients or recommend that, the first one is to look at what story you're telling yourself. And

that is a simple recognition to what story am I telling myself about my reality right now? And not to bring this into, like, Wuland, but I really mean, like, looking at, am I living under a microscope that everything's going to fall apart? Because if I am, it's time to get myself out of that seat so that I can take action and show up for people. And if I don't feel like I have the confidence to lead myself right now, I'm doing it for the people that are paying me and I'm doing it for the people that need it. You know, whatever it is that you need to do, what story you need to be telling yourself to shift you out of that panic state that you might be feeling, start there. Because if you don't work through that emotion, you're going to end up projecting it all over everybody that you are talking to on the phone or over email, Messenger, LinkedIn, whatever, over the coming weeks. Work through your own fear. That's step one, I think, for everybody. And that's all the time, not just right now. The second thing is what we just kind of talked about. Check in with your clients. Check in with the people that you are already, they're already, they have your trust. They're paying you. They're giving you money. Do your duty as a leader and check in with them and see how they're doing. The third thing would be opportunity is endless. And I don't think that this is a time to go and recreate your business because I think there is a little bit of a dangerous territory in that. But how can you use the skills that you already have to do what you're doing that and look at what other markets can I help right now that maybe I haven't given myself an opportunity. I haven't given myself an opportunity before to see in my line of work that I could reach out to right now. So get creative and start thinking outside the

box a little bit. The fourth one is it's never been easier to have a conversation than it is right now. Every single person on the planet is feeling similar feelings, emotions. We're all, I mean, we're going on lockdown in 24 hours. You and I are about to both be kind of stuck in our house, not able to leave. It has never been easier to have a conversation with someone as it is right now. And that doesn't mean go sell your service and three, three little text messages, but how can you truly connect with people? It's really easy right now to connect with people. Utilize that. Get out of your comfort zone. I would say the fifth thing is contact Mallory to get in the right mindset. All right. And so how, how can people find out more about what you're putting out there in the world? And if they want to connect with you, get some help. Tell me, tell me about how they can connect with you. Abundantlyclearpodcast.com is the easiest way to get to my website. And you can just shoot me a message on the contact page. And I actually have a separate calendar link right now because I get it. Some people are very stuck in fear and they, they don't know how to move forward. I've opened up some time on my calendar to try and just give time to people that are like, I don't know what to do. Those that need it, feel free to reach out. Happy to give you some time to do that. Cause I, I think, you know, a year from now, we're going to look back on this. There's going to be a lot of positive things that came from it. It might feel really heavy right now. And I do still have a lot of empathy and, and can understand a lot of people are losing their jobs. A lot of people are going through really hard times, but I know this about myself, the two hardest times in my life. And

they were hard. Like I have, I've had some two really, really traumatic times in my life. Looking back, they were the best things that ever could have happened to me. I wasn't able to see it in the moment when it was going on, but my life wouldn't be where it is today right now, if it were not for those two things. Man, Mallory, I, I, I totally agree. Send me that link. I'll, I'll share it when I share this podcast. I probably need to get on there too, to see what's going on in my head. Maybe we record it and just let everybody like, just like open up. Like, yeah, here's, here's what a coaching session looks like. Like I'll share all my, you know, stuff that I got going on. It might be fun. And I think that, you know, um, being, being genuine and being real, um, is, uh, when, I mean, so, so I, in, in my book, so I, I, I got a book out there and I don't, I don't talk about it as much, but right now I think people should probably be building their brand. Um, but I talk about people want to do business with people they know, like, and trust. Right. And so, uh, also on social media, like, you know, there's a lot of companies out there that do like social media marketing and stuff like that. And there's not a lot of engagement since, uh, Facebook changed its algorithm on Facebook. People have moved over to like LinkedIn and Tik TOK and some things like that. But, um, like the posts that are genuine of what's going on at your company of people that you help, like, like, that's what people want to see. They want to see what, what's the day to day, right. They want to see what's going on. They want to see what's real. And I think that that's so important because I get a lot of times that people go, Hey, you know, I, I, I've been kind of

listening to some of the stuff that you've been putting out. And I, and I connect with what you're saying and I connect with who you are and I feel like I know you and like, I want to do business with you. Right. Like that, that is, that is, that is, you know, one of the things that I find and, and moving into kind of the digital space from, um, what I was doing before. That's all I was trying to do anyway. Right. Like, like if you're, if you're doing any kind of sales or, you know, you have any kind of business or service, you're trying to get your message out there of like, Hey, this is what I offer. It's quality, you know, you know, I'm going to take care of you. Like all these sorts of things that people are putting out, but like there, there's, there's not that human connection. Right. And, um, through, through video, um, through voice, um, through, through social media, like that's the way to connect with people today. And if everybody's sitting in their home on their screen, whether it's, you know, a big screen TV to their phone, um, they're, they're, they're searching through stuff. So it's, it is an absolute great time to connect with people looking at, you know, okay, this will end, right? Like this will end. And when that ends, what, what, what does everything look like then? And can we do anything to pivot a little bit of operating in this environment? Right. So, um, you know, I, I, it's about shifting, not paralyzing. Like everything that you're saying, you know, I've had so many people ask me, should I stop selling? Is it rude to sell right now? It's like, no, but you need to just be aware of how you're doing it. You know, business doesn't just stop. Yeah. Like business doesn't just need to stop. Like business just stops. Like that doesn't make any sense, but everything that you're saying right now, how are you actually connecting? If anything,

it's enhancing our ability to look at how we're marketing ourselves and how we're really running our business. Oh, I love that. I love that. This is the, this is the opportunity to really look in the mirror and, and see what we're doing and enhance how, how we're presenting ourself to the world, how, how we're viewing the world of ourselves. Right. Like that positive mindset. Um, I love that. I would love to just end there and, uh, have to have you on again. And it was great, uh, connecting with you. Is there anything else? Is there anything else that we haven't covered that you want to share? Cause I want to make sure that you, you have the opportunity to like, what's the, what's the, maybe the final word that you would leave everybody with? Uh, I mean, just to, just to zoom out. And I know that might seem a little cliche, but just remember, like, I, I guarantee you every single person that's listening to this has been through something harder in their life, but they're here listening to this podcast. And that's telling that you're going to get through this. Like no matter what it brings to your life, maybe it's harder than some other people, you know, but just the fact that, you know, yourself, you're resilient. You've been through something harder that gives you proof that you're going to be fine. I love that. All right. Well, thank you so much. And thanks for having me. All right. Bye now.

Matthew Bertram, host of The Best SEO Podcast
Matthew Bertram
AI keynote speaker · Owner & CEO, EWR Digital · President, ModalPoint

Matthew Bertram is an AI keynote speaker, creator of DIG® (Digital Information Governance), and owner and CEO of EWR Digital. He helps energy and industrial leaders win visibility in AI search (GEO and AEO), is President of ModalPoint and CMO of the Oil & Gas Global Network, hosts The Best SEO Podcast, and has authored eight books including LLM Visibility. More about Matthew Bertram.

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